Here all the boys and girls jeered.
“You’re too hard on a fellow, Jack,” whined the scared Riley, slipping out of the corner and continuing to back down the school-room, while Jack kept slowly following him.
“You’re a great deal bigger than I am,” said Jack. “Why don’t you try to corner me? Oh, I could just beat the breath out of you, you great, big, good-for-nothing——”
Here Riley pulled the west door open, and Jack, at the same moment, struck him. Riley half dropped, half fell, through the door-way, scared so badly that he went sprawling on the ground.
The boys shouted “coward” and “baby” after him as he sneaked off, but Jack went back to comfort Columbus and to get control of his temper. For it is not wise, as Jack soon reflected, even in a good cause to lose your self-control.
“It was good of you to interfere,” said Susan, when she had come in and learned all about it.
“I should have been a brute if I hadn’t,” said Jack, pleased none the less with her praise. “But it doesn’t take any courage to back Riley out of a school-house. One could get more fight out of a yearling calf. I suppose I’ve got to take a beating from Pewee, though.”
“Go and see him about it, before Riley talks to him,” suggested Susan. And Jack saw the prudence of this course. As he left the school-house at a rapid pace, Ben Berry told Riley, who was skulking behind a fence, that Jack was afraid of Pewee.
“Pewee,” said Jack, when he met him starting to school, after having done his “chores,” including the milking of his cow,—“Pewee, I want to say something to you.”
Jack’s tone and manner flattered Pewee. One thing that keeps a rowdy a rowdy is the thought that better people despise him. Pewee felt in his heart that Jack had a contempt for him, and this it was that made him hate Jack in turn. But now that the latter sought him in a friendly way, he felt himself lifted up into a dignity hitherto unknown to him. “What is it?”